alanjjohnstone
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As been raised before that the environmentalist overpopulation alarmists have very strange and unwelcomed bed-fellows.
“…we’re all completely ignoring, the real problem the Earth faces, and that is the fact the population of the globe is exploding but no one dares talk about it, no one dares deal with it, and whether Prince Harry has two kids is irrelevant given there are now 2.6 billion Chinese and Indians on this Earth…”
Unlike the eco-warriors, it’s not about consumption levels because the carbon foot-prints of Americans and Europeans I imagine exceeds those of the Indians and Chinese. Farage makes it a race problem.
But he is no friend of the eco-movement
He told his Australian audience “greenies have taken over this country” and repeats the right wing mantra that conservatives are not true conservatives but “trendy, metro, liberal elite masquerading as a conservative.”
While we have been mainly focused on XR on this thread, I cannot dismiss the lurking thought in the back of my head that the rise of the xenophobic nationalists (and that includes Indians and the Chinese) will perhaps be our greatest and foremost threat as soon as we become impacted by the consequences of climate change grow beyond what they are now with mainly localized El Nino-related droughts and floods. What is going to happen when grain harvests and agriculture collapse on a much wider scale? We have touched on the latent threats such as herders V. farmers conflicts, Central American migration.
Once again the prospects for the future looks bleak and dark every time I see the news. The only good item to go back to the dispute Bijou and I had about Greggs the Bakers…I can’t wait to try the vegan sausage roll that seems an astounding success.
I still tend to think that the spark of the coming economic conflagration will be in China which has its fingers in all the global pies. Their bubble isn’t growing as fast as before but it is still expanding…but when that bubble bursts the repercussions will show themselves everywhere it has invested and that is in nearly every region. of the world.
But just to say, schekn, this topic was created by me tongue in cheek so I can claim to be the first to predict the recession…by claiming credit for every sign of it as the crisis materializing…
As there is a strong advocacy by elements of US business for reducing the value of the $, I wonder, too, of any importance of challenging its circulation.
I also wonder if you have given any consideration to the various foreign countries currencies that are pegged to the value of the $.
If what you approve of materialises, are you prmoting of the pain this would inflict upon the working class who are the ones who always bear the burdens of an economic crises. The wealthy would simply convert their $ wealth to another currency or perhaps buy gold, something a lot more trustworthy than either Bitcoin or Facebook money
Wez, I can only concur. I am a frequent visitor to “progressive” American websites and often come across statements that the problem of overconsumption is one of overpopulation.
When I correct that misconception, and I usually do so simply by giving a few facts and figures and asking how these are reconcilable with any claim that too many people and not the system of society is culpable, I am the one who receives the ad hominem attacks.
Disturbing the peace of mind and upsetting sacred cows is never a popular thing to do especially when there has been generations of “intellectual” justification for holding those false ideas.
No, schekn, I am not hostile or would you consider my differences with yourself to be hostility or is it someone with another perspective presenting it? I’m plead guilty to sometimes being a bit too forceful in giving my arguments because I am persistent and often get accused of being too lengthy in my explanations, over-egging the pudding in my replies.
When two people have conflicting opinions, sometimes they are resolved in a friendly way, through discussion and debate and the presentation of evidence. But sometimes personal offence is taken and the participants go into “defence” mode, denying the validity of counter arguments because they feel aggrieved that somehow they themselves are under attack, not their ideas.
I am well experienced at being the person who holds a minority contrarian position as any regular on this forum will tell you. I am been involved in numerous disputes here. While I express myself with conviction, I do not think any forum-visitor would charge me of disrespect and certainly not of being hostile to another’s position but actually quite tolerant. (But maybe I am blind to my own faults and comrades are being charitable to me)
My approach to XR has been posted here and elsewhere. The SPGB has considerable resources. We should invite XR to avail themselves of our facilities and I suggest that drawing XR into direct contact with ourselves (which they are presently are not) will through this helpful logistical offer, unconditional on whether they and ourselves fully agree, is just one non-confrontational reaching out that is practical rather than polemical.
I am well aware that we can lead the horse to water but cannot make it drink so some disappointment is to be expected, but nevertheless I consider when people have access to our case for socialism, some will come to understand and accept it.
Points 1 and 2 takes us all the way back to the 19thC when it was very much agreed that the system had to be changed and all those who described themselves socialists accepted this fact – (not so for many socialists today who now dropped any pretence of advocating a socialist society and have satisfied for a form of regulated capitalism.)
But what emerged from the 19th Century was that all those socialists who understood the cause of society’s problems and were in agreement that a socialist revolution was necessary could not agree on the manner of establishing socialism and diverged from any opportunity for unity.
When I previously mentioned that the idea of socialism was viewed with a certain amount of skepticism and suspicion, it was because two of the socialist branches, labourism and bolshevism, ended in failure and created much disillusionment.
We are now confronted with a very similar dilemma today.
Of course we can agree with the eco-movement that we are suffering from environmental harm and we can even agree with many that the cause is capitalism. I hold that it is a existential threat to civilisation.
However, once again we a separated by our respective strategies of solving the problem. In many cases with certain proponents of the eco-movement our differing approaches are incompatible. We cannot remain mute on these issues.
Just as earlier the ecologists were engaged in a battle of ideas with climate change deniers, we too are challenging the accepted conventional wisdom and we have made little inroads, sadly.
You may say that our case is not very original – well, true since it has been one presented by socialists for well over a hundred years – but in my experience, the majority of people are still trapped within the capitalist ideology and we shouldn’t be really be surprised.
As Marxists we have conceded that the dominant ideas of a society is that of the ruling class. It is only when those come into conflict with new contradictory conditions and circumstances and become break down that ideas change.
In my most pessimistic moments I think even the most progressive liberal green is still tethered to the beliefs of capitalism. The blog article undermines much of the accepted interpretation and understanding of how they see the world via the media and the “experts” who hold their own ideological bias in maintaining the myth that social evolution is not possible.
Am I hostile? No. Do I disagree? Yes.
Schekn,
In response to this discussion thread I have posted on our blog, endeavouring to answer such things as carrying capacity and over-population.
It is a bit too lengthy and perhaps should have been split into separate parts but I hope it clarifies where the SPGB positions itself.
No doubt you won’t agree with everything and some things you would yourself have worded differently, as would even by our own members, but it can be linked to by yourself in your other discussions elsewhere on the web as representative of our ecological approach.
https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2019/08/sustainable-socialism_11.html
The New York Times bias
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/08/10/new-york-times-pro-war-arguments-against-war-iran
“…Wars don’t spontaneously combust, nor do the “risks of conflict . . . grow sharply” on their own…These editorials make it sound as if the US and Iran have been brought to the edge of war by immutable physical laws, rather than by conscious decisions the US ruling class has made. Framing the issue this way hides US government responsibility for the increased possibility of war….”
Just to add one of my favourite all-time quotes from Joseph Dietzgen.
” If a worker wants to take part in the self-emancipation of his class , the basic requirement is that he should cease allowing others to teach him and should set about teaching himself.”
As for expecting hurdles to be met from many who have their pre-conceived ideas on what socialism is, I think we can thank all those groups and parties and organisations that claimed to be “socialist” yet not only weren’t but were the actual antipathy to the idea of socialism. Much of our time is clearing up such misconceptions and as I say, the ruling class are happily still muddying the waters.
Are we different from other workers? Yes and No. As said on another thread we are class-conscious workers who possess a materialist conception of history and that makes us see the world from a very different viewpoint from our fellow-workers. Since we hold that our circumstances, situation and surroundings broadly determines our ideas and thoughts, we are not as defeatist even if we do express a degree of fatalism.
I only made the reference to hunter-gatherer to give support to the claim that homo sapiens exists because we can change our conditions and environments and it did benefit our species to be able to do that…we prospered and re-produced, the sign of that we were a successful species.
I am often amazed as a Scot to hear the tourists marvel at our wonderful Highland heather moors, mistaking them to be natural when in fact they are man-made and currently retained maintained for the pleasures of the wealthy grouse shooting estate owners with the original Caledonian Forest wiped out.
Am I a prisoner of my own ideology? Do I possess the fallacy of confirmation bias as you imply?
The claim being made is that there are too many people in the world for the existing resources to satisfy all adequately? And the claim is that in future the situation can only worsen.
That isn’t an ideological question. But one can be shown empirically to be false. We can supply and support many more billions than there are presently on the planet.
Can it be done through the existing relationships and institutions that we in todays society. We can agree that it isn’t possible because already the capitalist system in unable to fulfil that goal despite food and resource surpluses. We don’t have a population problem – we have a distribution problem.
I’m not fooling myself, schekn. Nor am I bestowing society with infallibility, but the potential is there and the experience and expertise exists for that potential to be realized. We are no way close to exhausting or even approaching our limits. I am no way deluding myself but yes we need to change the system or we do face societal collapse.
Your advice on how to associate and relate to the environment movement is appreciated. We shouldn’t alienate and distance ourselves to a receptive audience.
But I should add the cautionary caveat that I rarely raise the issue of over-population and carrying capacity. I present a vision that the suffering and misery can disappear by social revolution to socialism. We are the ones who are challenged as utopians and alongside those ideas are other opinions inherent in those who accept capitalism will continue to prevail by the repetition of the lazy, selfish, aggressive human nature caricature of what humanity is in their eyes.
I don’t think it is possible to always agree with other people, the way to resolve that conflict is to engage in comradely disagreements – and that takes two sides to do.
Socialists will always be treated with suspicion and skepticism, and although there is historic reasons for it, we have to be aware that it is in the interest of the ruling class to ensure that confusion continues by misrepresenting ourselves.
Self-education and self-liberation is the only way this dichotomy can be overcome – and I am an optimist that people can and do change their belief systems. We can only help out by speeding up the process a little, schekn, and hopefully not retard it.
I am always mindful (if not always true to it) of the defunct group Solidarity in As We See It
“…Meaningful action, for revolutionaries, is whatever increases the confidence, the autonomy, the initiative, the participation, the solidarity, the equalitarian tendencies and the self -activity of the masses and whatever assists in their demystification. Sterile and harmful action is whatever reinforces the passivity of the masses, their apathy, their cynicism, their differentiation through hierarchy, their alienation, their reliance on others to do things for them and the degree to which they can therefore be manipulated by others – even by those allegedly acting on their behalf…”
Polls show Warren making gains
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/08/09/surging-polls-elizabeth-warren-now-has-path-nomination
SCHEKN – “What I am proposing here (the first thing) is that we should approach the already most mobilized and interested people out there, namely XR and other climate change activists and educate them about capitalism’s role in the destruction of environment.”
We would welcome and appreciate some sort of contact list to accomplish this.
ALB has raised the problem elsewhere that the coming 20/27 September actions may manifest themselves in a way that we cannot reach out to. Also our customary propaganda approach of leafleting is very questionable regards paper waste.
I personally do not know where there are discussion lists and message boards that we can use.
We know our own messages are not being heard and falling on barren ground and for those few who do hear it , the messages are not resonating.
If you have links to a potential receptive audience it is the type of shortcut we would be very grateful for, schekn.
I often wonder about how different the plight of the Roma would be different if they had been paid reparations in the same manner as the many Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
Would the Roma still be living in their ghettoes as they are now?
Albeit, those who have been drawing attention to the disparity and demanding more compensation for the Roma has been mostly Jewish organisations.
Reparations for Afro-americans with slave antecedents is still being debated but I see little chance of success.
Despite every treaty promise the First Peoples in North America remain marginised and neglected.
This also applies to Central and South America, the tribals of India, and the pygmy and bushmen of Africa. No Political Clout – Get Out
Its always helpful to admit errors. Yes, I should not have said tens of millenia since the agricultural revolution was as you say relatively recent at 10,000 years or so ago not tens of thousands of years.
But would you accept that the hunter-gatherer societies did have an environmental impact on their eco-systems? As you cite Jared Diamond, has he not explained animal species extinctions in the quarternary period upon human action?
The amount of UNUSED arable land that can be brought into cultivation is enormous and with the application of new farming techniques such as agri-ecology the reliance on oil-based fertilisers is no longer necessary. That means that the environmental limits you insist remain in place can in in fact be exceeded. (look to a future article in the Socialist Standard on the Guinea Savannah Zone)
I think we can put the reason down to the reluctance of Big Ag to switch from their profit model of making African nations food importers and exporters of only cash crops such as palm oil/soya/tea/coffee and many other such commodities. We can also accept the that a meat-eating diet also has a negative influence on “environmental limits” and there is a considerable advertising business which says a building a new McDonalds in the neighbourhood is better than a new medical clinic.
There is also a global problem of land-grab of the most fertile regions to feed the profit appetites of the food industry.
And what about the rise of urban farming, treated as a new phenomenon, but the UK during the war greatly expanded its food production with the creation of new allotments.
You yourself touch upon the great potential of technological advances that aren’t restricted just to industrial products but can make farming more fruitful.
We should really now be concentrating on the political implications and ramifications of this disconnect we have with the wider eco-movement. This is where our focus should be.
I think we can agree that the likelihood of capitalism transforming itself into a economic system for the benefit of humanity is rather a gloomy prognosis. For it, it will always be business-as-usual until it collapses.
But will the possibility be more optimistic if we feed into the current prevailing beliefs of the eco-movement that there can be no more material development because we have a population problem and a consumption problem entirely due to the mis-distribution and mis-allocation of resources of todays flawed economic system. Should we give any credence to many in the eco-movement that alternative social systems other than capitalism is not feasible?
We accept overpopulation and overcrowding and urbanisation is a problem FOR capitalism, as is war, poverty, pandemics and a myriad of other issues.
So do we argue with those in the eco-movement that NO, too many people on the planet is not an existential threat for the human race, that NO, running out of various raw materials does not mean there are not other alternatives we can look towards.
I think our task is hard for the conventional wisdom ( supported by so-called experts who do not have political understanding and enter a debate outside their professional qualifications and repeat the same misconceptions as any other person who doesn’t possess a PhD) is that mankind is the problem and not the social system and the type of society it lives under. The task is made even harder because the more “radical” in the eco-movement advocate localism something that is not always the most eco efficient and cooperatives, a nicer capitalism but capitalism nevertheless
When I see a mass exodus of migrants from that densely packed together over-populated, country called the Netherlands that somehow can still be a net food exporter then I will accept the logic of the over-population alarmists. (Maybe not the best example as it soon may be flooded by rising sea levels. But on the other hand an example of the effectiveness of sea defences if applied elsewhere such a Bangladesh)
Just to add that using the search facility in our blog will produce a plethora of posts on population with stacks of stats provided.
The latest being to-day’s one on the scare-mongering by Hindu nationalists that Muslims are out-breeding Hindus, using over-population as an ideological cover.
I have lost count of the times I challenged left-leaning greens on American websites to explain a solution to over-population that does not call for eugenic policies of infanticide of the increasing numbers of babies surviving at birth and early years or the euthanasia of all those elderly people, living longer and healthier.
The scenario is that with the exception of Africa fertility rates are dropping globally and in many cases so are the populations of many counties who are feverishly trying to boost birth rates.
And even in Africa itself many countries are following that demographic trend. But if such countries as Nigeria will experience dramatic population rises, the potential for agricultural expansion has been so far untapped.
How can a country like the Congo with so much mineral wealth of vitally required strategic raw materials be so desperately poor? That is not a population problem, it is a political problem.
As you say, ALB, the actual figures may have changed from our early pamphlets but our explanations has not. Nor have they changed from the time Marx exposed Malthus’s misconceptions on population.
